Create an Authentic, Retro Style Advert

WHAT WE’RE CREATING:

Hello Design Cutters!

Jo here. Today, we’re entering a bit of a vintage design vortex by creating an advert for a vintage themed ‘Parfumerie Fayre’ event, in a retro 50’s style. Using the first ever version of Photoshop for some extra vintage flair… (just kidding)! :p

We’ll be looking at how to combine the variety of resources available in the current vintage bundle and what techniques and pointers to consider so that you can create authentic looking vintage designs.

Quick note: In this tutorial, the term “clipping” or “clipped layer” is used a few times. This means that the layer is only visible/applies to the layer directly below it. You can very quickly do this by holding ‘Alt’ down on your keyboard and clicking between the two layers. Here’s a quick demonstration.

Ok, let’s get started!

Follow along with this tutorial: Download the freebies

We’ve got a huge freebie for you today thanks to the good folks at Piddix and 2 Lil Owls, who have generously donated a selection of papers, textures, images, type and labels (just to name a few!) to help you follow along with the tutorial.

Step 1:

First up, create a new a new (A4) 3508px height x 2480px width document in Photoshop.

We want to create a really tactile, aged paper effect background to make our design look like it’s been torn straight out of a 1950s magazine. Luckily, we have a huge range of vintage papers to choose from in this bundle to help us out! In this instance we’ll use 2LO Dirty grunge 2 – 11.jpg from the freebies selection. Paste on to your canvas, scaling to fit:

This has got a great texture and some nice marks, but is perhaps a bit dark in colour. To lighten this up and add a few more textural touches in the process, we’ll use another paper with the Soft Light filter. Grab Paper1700s_1754e_piddix.jpg, our second paper image from the freebies, again pasting on to your canvas, scaling to fit:

Change the blend mode to Soft Light for our overall effect:

Now we’ve created our ideal vintage paper effect, let’s keep it neat and easy to find by grouping the layers together in a folder called “Background”.

Step 2:

Another great way of creating an authentic aged look to printed materials is to use screen textures. This can recreate the realistic faded, scuffed and general wear and tear you’d expect on vintage paper prints.

We’ll create our own screen texture from the abundance of paper resources available in the bundle, as it’s super easy to do :)

First we want to find our paper source, ideally something with some nice marks, scratches and a good level of contrast. When considering a paper to use for a screen texture, remember to think in ‘reverse’. In other words, the darker areas will form the faded, lighter areas of the screen. In this case, we’e using 2LO Dirty grunge 4.jpg from the freebies pack. Again, paste on to your canvas and scale to fit:

Next, we need to rasterize the layer in order to invert the colour, which you can do via Image > Adjustments > Invert (alternatively “cmd + I” on mac, “ctrl + I” on windows):

To remove the blue tint on the image, we’re going to apply a clipped hue/saturation Adjustment Layer so that we have a neutral screen effect (no sneaky colour tints!):

The final step in creating the screen texture is to alter the Levels and increase the contrast. We can do this by adding a clipped Levels Adjustment Layer above the hue/saturation, which allows us to easily tweak it later if needed. For now though, use the following settings:

Levels Settings:
Black Point: 0
Midtones: 1.00
White Point: 160

You can see this gives us a much grittier, higher contrast image where we can really make out the details:

Then, change the blend mode of the original image layer (not the adjustment layers) to Screen:

We can’t really see much of the effect yet, but since we know we want to include a screen effect on our work, it’ll make the design process easier being able to accomodate for it from the start. Group the screen layers together in a folder called “Screen” and lock the group to the top of your layers panel.

Now we’re ready to go retro :)

Step 3:

We’ll start by setting up a few guides to give us a plain border around our work and help with the layout. Position a guide at 5mm in from each edge:

From here, we’ll create our 50s style header. Select #92C3C9 as the foreground colour and use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to draw a rectangle that’s just over one-third of the top of the page:

Press ‘alt + delete’ on your keyboard to fill with our foreground colour, then change the blend mode to Multiply:

You can see the difference the screen texture makes once we start adding colour:

Next, we’re going to add some pattern using a layer mask to create a damask wallpaper effect. We’ll do this using one of the 2 Lil Owls brushes that are included in the bundle. If you’ve not already, install the brush set from here: Authentic-Vintage-2-Lil-Vintage-Brush-sets-1 > 2LO-epherema collage > 2LO – epherema collage.abr

Create a Layer Mask, then select the following brush from the set (just after the big spots), changing the size to about 3920px:

Set the mask brush colour to #989898, as we don’t want to entirely mask out the colour. Then, use the brush to ‘stamp’ the pattern on to our colour block:

Step 4:

Retro adverts, particularly from the 50s and early 60s like we’re referencing here, are often instantly recognisable from their illustration style – especially of people. By having a library of authentic images to use, we have a huge advantage in making our design look truly realistic. See it as our secret weapon ;)

We’ll be using the following image of this dapper couple for our advert design, which you can find in the freebies pack: MidCenturyPeople_5039_piddix.jpg

Paste the image on to your canvas and change the blend mode to multiply so we can see where to align the edge of the image to the edge of our header block. Scale to a similar size as below:

Going back to our layer mask on our colour block layer, we need to mask out the background behind our couple. Choose a slightly rough-edged, painterly brush for a softer edge and to help recreate the ‘fluffy’ outline of the woman’s coat, and set the colour to black:

We now want to add a bit of retro text to our advert. A great retro font is the ever popular Lobster (which you can download free or choose to donate), which is used a few times in this design. A chunky, casual script style font would also work as an alternative.

Set the font size to 60pt and the colour to #E4D7C1, which was colour-picked from our paper background for continuity. Type “Darling,”:

We want to give the text a bit of emphasis with an italic style, but the ‘Lobster’ font set doesn’t come with an italic option… Not to worry! Photoshop has us covered in their Character Panel:

Select the “Darling,” text and apply the Faux Italic option (circled) which will add a ‘fake’ italic effect by slanting the text for us.

After applying the effect, move and tilt the text using the Transform tool to a similar position as below:

We’ll add a simple drop shadow effect by duplicating the layer, changing the text colour to #7FB9C0 and blend mode to Multiply. Move the layer below the original text and nudge it down and right slightly using the arrow keys:

Next we’ll add a slightly tongue-in-cheek strapline, another common feature of adverts from this period. As this is for a ‘Vintage Parfumerie Fayre’ we’ll go for “The past has never smelled so sweet…”. (*badum tsk*)

Use a bold, serif font such as ‘Alegreya SC Bold’ and set it to italic, with the colour as #A39261. Add a few spaces on the new line which starts with “smelled”, then set the layer blend mode to Multiply:

Step 5:

We’re not quite finished with the header just yet, but we need to add a separate design element before we can continue.

To add to the advertising and promotional theme of this piece, let’s add a sponsor logo. We’re going to use 2LO Vintage Whiskey 4.jpg from the freebies, as the colours fit in perfectly with our design so far:

Paste on to your canvas and switch the blend mode to Multiply. Use the guides to scale and position so it’s similar to below:

Using the same font as we did in our strapline (“The past has never…”) type “Sponsored by” above the label and change the text colour to #282424, setting the layer blend mode to Multiply. Use the Transform tool to scale the text manually so that it matches the width of the label:

Group the two layers in to a folder called “Sponsors” to keep things tidy and easy to find.

Step 6:

Going back to our header image, we can now add a little extra decoration featuring our sponsor logo.

From the freebies, grab the following Frames_12394_piddix image:

Paste on to your canvas and set the layer blend mode to Multiply. Scale and position so that it’s similar to the image below, filling up the remaining space in the header:

The black looks a little stark compared to the rest of the header, so we’ll use a clipped hue/saturation Adjustment Layer to help tie it in. Create the clipped Adjustment Layer, and apply the following settings:

Next, we want to include the sponsor logo within the frame. We’ll do this by duplicating the label we used earlier and changing the blend mode to Soft Light. This way, we can see where to position it within the frame:

We’ll create a layer mask to only display the part of the logo we want within the frame. On the layer mask, use the Elliptical Marquee Tool to draw an ellipse that matches the shape and size of the frame as closely as possible. Press ‘cmd + I’ (‘ctrl + I’ on Windows) to inverse the selection so that the entire area outside the frame is selected to mask:

Make sure black is selected as the foreground colour, then hit ‘alt + delete’ on your keyboard to mask the area:

Once the mask has been applied, duplicate the layer and change the blend mode to Multiply. Drop the opacity to 80% to complete the effect:

Group all the layers that make up the header in to a folder called “Header Image” to keep everything easy to find as we continue to build up our image!

Step 7:

From the freebies pack paste the AirMailEnvelopes_12919_piddix image on to your canvas as follows, setting the blend mode to Multiply:

Duplicate the layer, then hide the original. This is so that we have a ‘back up’ as we’ll be rasterizing the layer and using the Background Eraser tool.

Rasterize the duplicated layer, then use the Background Eraser tool to remove as much of the paper as possible:

Finish off by using a layer mask to hide any creases missed by the background eraser and the text on the envelope. We want to create a corner border, so use the mask to neaten up the remaining edges:

The pattern looks great, but the colour stands out a bit as it is. We’ll create a hue/saturation clipped Adjustment Layer to bring this closer to our existing palette:

To fill the gap to the left along the bottom, we’ll duplicate the layer along with the hue/saturation Adjustment Layer. Update the Layer Mask to hide everything other than the bottom border, then use the Transform tool to stretch the image to fit and position so that it joins up along the bottom. You may need to use the Layer Mask to carefully remove any visible overlap, so that it looks as seamless as possible:

We’ll do the housekeeping here by putting the layers in to a group called “Envelope Edge”.

This would also be a good time to take a little break if you haven’t already :) Grab a glass of water, stretch your legs and give your eyes a rest from the screen and we’ll move on to adding some cool vintage fonts once you’re refreshed and ready!

Step 8:

A really nice resource in this bundle are the vintage typographic posters, which we can use to add some authentic text to our designs.

As these aren’t an actual font we can install, they’re better suited to shorter text such as headlines, unless of course, you are extremely patient :). In this step, we’ll go through the quickest way to extract the fonts from the posters to use on our own design.

We’re going to create the word “Vintage” using the typography from one of the posters included in our freebie bundle, TypePosters_13086_piddix.jpg:

Open the image up in it’s own Photoshop document, then zoom in to the line which reads “Noted Teacher is Visiting School”:

This is because the line contains all the letters we need to create the word “Vintage” and we won’t need to adjust the size of individual letters, helping us to save time and keep consistency.

On the poster document, select the Magic Wand tool and set the tolerance as 100. Then, click on any black area of the letter “V”:

Copy the selection, then move back to your working document and paste on to your canvas:

Repeat for the rest of the letters, then position to spell out the desired word. Take care to make sure the letters sit on a straight a line as possible, setting up guides to help if necessary:

Group the letters together to make them easy to find and keep things organised.

Once you’ve grouped your layers together, you can apply a clipped hue/saturation Adjustment Layer to your group to change the colour. Make sure the individual layers for each letter are set to Multiply, and the group itself to Pass Through. Then, create your hue/saturation Adjustment Layer with the following settings:

Note: If your version of Photoshop doesn’t support clipped layers for groups, you’ll need to merge the group layers and apply the hue/saturation to that. Remember to create a hidden duplicate of your un-merged group first, just in case you need to go back to anything. You don’t want to pick out all the individual letters again!

Step 9:

For some more authentically vintage text, were going to borrow some typography straight from one of the perfume labels included in the freebie, 2LO Vintage Perfume 11.jpeg

Open up the file in its own Photoshop document, then crop the image as tightly round the word “Parfumerie” as possible:

Then, use a combination of the Background Eraser tool and Eraser tool to isolate the word:

Copy and paste on to your working canvas, changing the blend mode to Multiply. Scale and postion so that it sits similarly to the image below:

We’ll change the text colour to the dark gold used elsewhere in the design with a hue/saturation clipped Adjustment Layer with the following settings:

Step 10:

We’ll continue our text with another typography set from our freebie posters, this time TypePosters_13089_piddix.jpg:

Use the same approach as we did to create the word “Vintage”, adjusting the size of any letters as required so that they are all the same height:

As we did for the word “Vintage”, group the letters together making sure the individual letter layers are set to Multiply, and the group as Pass Through. Apply a hue/saturation clipped Adjustment Layer with the same settings:

Step 11:

Next, we’ll add a few finishing touches to complete our event title text. Using the same font and colour as you did for the strapline in the header, type “Presenting the 1st Annual” with the font style set to italic. Scale and position so that it sits in the space between the word “Parfumerie” and the bottom of the header, then set the blend mode to Multiply:

We’ll also add some floral decoration to continue the fragrant theme. From the freebies, copy and paste the following image, 2LO Vintage Ephemera 7-6.png, on to your canvas so it’s positioned at the end of the word “Parfumerie”:

Set the blend mode to Multiply and the Opacity to 85%:

Duplicate the layer, then rotate 180 degrees and position at the beginning of the word “Fayre” to create some balance:

Great stuff! Let’s group all those together in a folder called “Vintage Parfumerie Fayre” so we can find everything much easier.

Step 12:

Demonstrating how to party, vintage style, we’ll use another great illustration from our freebies pack, Party_11951_piddix:

Paste the image on to your canvas, changing the blend mode to Multiply. Then, scale and position so that it sits underneath the word “Vintage” and the width doesn’t exceed that of the sponsor logo:

We’ll soften this up and pick out some of the contrasting pink tones from the illustration of the couple in the header, by creating a clipped hue/saturation Adjustment Layer:

We’ll finish off this step by typing “Drinks & Dancing” in the same font used for the strapline, but this time taking away the bold and italic styling. Set the font colour as #313030 and the blend mode to Multiply, then scale and position to fit like in the image below:

Step 13:

We’re starting to build up a busy, grid based layout for the lower part of our design, which is a common feature of a lot of vintage adverts. We’ll continue this with a column of text promoting the event and providing some details.

With the Type tool selected, click and drag to form a narrow text box:

You can then create your own retro-inspired advert text to fill it with, or copy and paste the below:

Ladies!
Come and join us for an evening of spectacular scents from centuries past!

Presenting the first Annual Gold Seal Vintage Parfumerie Fayre, you’ll be treated to a night of drinks, dancing and divine fragrances.

Tell your sweetheart the past has never smelled so sweet!

Date: Friday 11th May
Time: 5.30pm – 11pm
Cost: £2.50

Venue:
Main Hall, London, E6

Use the Paragraph panel to set the text to fill the width of the text box, with the final line justified left. Use the same font as you have been doing for the standard text, just changing the first word, “Ladies!” to the same font as we used for “Darling,” in the header.

Set the blend mode to Multiply, and we’re making good progress on our authentic looking ad!

Step 14:

We’ll up the vintage factor some more by including some examples of the lovely perfume labels which will be featuring in our fictional event. You can find these in the freebies bundle as 2LO Vintage Perfume 1.jpeg, 2LO Vintage Perfume 9.jpeg and 2LO Vintage Perfume 12.jpeg:

These labels work well in our design because the colours are similar to our existing palette. Paste the three images on to your canvas, changing the blend mode to Multiply. Scale and position so that they sit similarly to the image below:

Finally for this step, type “A selection of fragrances from centuries past!” to sit below the labels. Set the layer blend mode to Multiply, and the justification to the right:

Keeping up our end-of-step housekeeping, group the layers in to folder called “Perfumes”.

Step 15:

We’re now entering the final few stages!

Since illustrated elements feature strongly in most vintage adverts, and because we have such a fantastic selection of them to choose from in this bundle, we’ll add one more…

From the freebies, select MidCenturyEngravingsGrey_13096_piddix.jpg, and paste in to the lower right corner of your canvas, setting the blend mode to Multiply:

The cocktail glass helps reflect the ‘drinks’ part of the event, and adds a sense of fun as the universal symbol for “a bit of a party” ;)

The black is a bit harsh for our design though, so we’ll correct this with another clipped hue/saturation Adjustment Layer:

Step 16:

Next, we’ll use a very cool vintage calendar resource that’s included in the freebie, OfficeEphemera_12908_piddix.jpg:

Paste this on to your canvas, again setting the blend mode to Multiply to allow that vintage paper texture through.

Scale, position and rotate so that it’s peeking out from behind the cocktail glass, similar to the image below:

Type “Save the date!” in the same bold font and colour as we did for the strapline, scaling and rotating so that it sits below the calendar, following the same angle:

To finish off this step, we’ll emphasise the ‘save the date’ instruction by circling the specified date on the calendar.

Select #E25858 as the colour, and choose a small brush that mimics a pencil or pen stroke to draw a freehand circle around the date, then change the blend mode to Multiply:

Step 17:

For our final step, we’ll add a simple finishing touch that adds authenticity by paying attention to detail. Since we’ve been creating a design that looks like an advert that would be found in a retro magazine, let’s add a page number in the corner.

Using a thinner or regular version of the main font you’ve been using for this design, type “P. 31” (or of course, any number you like) in the lower right corner of the canvas:

Make sure the colour is the same #313030 grey as we’ve been using for much of the text, and that the layer blend mode is Multiply.

And we’re done!

I really hope you enjoyed doing this tutorial, and got some inspiration for how you can use the resources in this bundle to create some authentic looking, vintage inspired designs!

If you’ve got any comments or questions, do leave them below and I’ll keep an eye out. Also, feel free to get in touch @rockportraits.

Remember to share your own creations on the Facebook page too, as we love seeing your own personal take on the tutorials and how you’ve used the resources for your own work :)

Hopefully this tutorial showed you just some of the ways you can use the huge variety of vintage resources available in this bundle – the possibilities are really endless! Remember you can get this huge, centuries-spanning bundle for 97% off this week! There are literally thousands of rare, beautiful vintage design resources included, and you’ll be saving over $1000, getting them all for just $28! Grab it below, while you still can:

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12 lovely comments from our community

This is a very detailed and thorough tutorial. It was very easy to follow, except for the instances where you ask us to use images from the freebie pack which aren’t in there! Needless to say, it throws in a wrench to the work because substitutes have to be found, and adjustments to them will then be different and result in a different end product. On the one hand, it’s good to be forced to experiment, on the other, it defeats the purpose of a tutorial and is frustrating to the person following it.

2LO Vintage Perfume 11.jpeg, 2LO Vintage Ephemera 7-6.png, and 2LO – epherema collage.abr are missing from the freebie pack (though you mention the last one is in the bundle as opposed to the freebie pack, so this one may be exempt).

Thank you so much for your comment, and for making us aware of the missing file. I’m so sorry we didn’t include the 2LO Vintage Perfume 11.jpeg. I’ve updated the bundle now, so that all the resources are in it. The 2LO Vintage Ephemera 7-6.png, and 2LO – epherema collage.abr are however not included in this freebie set, as they are too large to be part of this freebie.

I have spoken to Tom though, and have asked him to try an make sure to always include all the resources that are being used in the tutorial in future the future.

I will email you now with the file, so you don’t have to re-download the entire bundle again.

Thank you so much for getting back to Tina, I am so sorry for any inconvenience caused with accessing your bundle resources! Tina has updated these files now so you should be okay to download these items again but please do let me know if you have any issues with this and I will happily lend a hand!

I hope this helps, Laryssa, and please don’t hesitate to contact me should you have any other questions. I’m here to help!

Thank you for your comment, I am so sorry for any confusion caused with this tutorial – unfortunately the .abr file is not featured in this freebie and is used as an example to show our community members how to use their resources from the Beautiful, Rare Library of Authentic Vintage Treasures bundle.

I apologise for this inconvenience, Arne, but I hope you were still able to enjoy this tutorial! If you do have any other questions or if there is ever anything I could assist you with please do get in touch. I’m always happy to help!

It seems every time I can’t get past the instruction immediately before Step 3. It reads “Then, change the blend mode of the original image layer (not the adjustment layers) to Screen:” Which I do, but instead of the canvas turning light tan (as your example shows), my canvas turns blank/white. In Photoshop, when I look at the preview window of the layer after switching the blend to “Screen,” it looks correct. When I actually click the “Apply” button, my canvas does not appear as it did in the preview, nor does it look like your example. I’ve restarted from the beginning multiple times in order to check if I’ve done anything wrong, but the same result continues to occur. I would love to hear back, any help would be truly appreciated!

I’m struggling with this and crying for help.
I don’t think there is a youtube tutorial on it.
When you say “Then, change the blend mode of the original image layer (not the adjustment layers) to Screen:”, do you mean the layer called “2LO Dirty grunge 2 – 11.jpg”? Since that layer is already in a folder called “background”, do I then have to change the name of that folder to “Screen”?
Is a “clipped hue/saturation Adjustment Layer” the same as just a “hue/saturation Adjustment Layer “?